Comments from Israel, covering everything that you can imagine and more!

Wednesday, August 06, 2014

Ceasefire deaths

On July 15, exactly one week into IDF Operation
Defensive Edge in Gaza, the Israeli Govt, accepted the
unconditional ceasefire proposal of the Egyptian Govt., but Hamas
rejected that ceasefire and continued shooting. At that point there
had been some 194 Gazan casualties as reported in the international media based
on Hamas figures. By the end of the current fighting when Hamas accepted the
same unconditional Egyptian ceasefire 3 weeks later on Aug 5,
the death toll in Gaza had reportedly risen to 1,834. Therefore we can
say that exactly 1,640 people died in Gaza because Hamas refused to
accept the original ceasefire proposal. This is a fact,
whatever people may think or claim that the IDF did in the interim, if Hamas had
accepted the same ceasefire 3 weeks earlier, 1,640 Gazans would be
alive today.

According to Hamas sources only 25% of the casualties were combatants, but
you can find NO photos of any combatants in Gaza, because they are censored by
Hamas. According to the IDF they killed ca. 800 Hamas fighters during the
Operation, and this is based on field reports (i.e. ca. 50% combatants). If we
take this number from the total of 1834, this means that slightly over 1,000
civilians died in 4 weeks of fighting. This is in fact an incredibly LOW
number, considering that Gaza is a densely populated area in which the
IDF carried out over 2,500 attacks. This is a fourth of the weekly casualty toll
in Syria and much less than that in Iraq. The IDF of course claims that all of
its attacks were against Hamas positions, including missile launchers, firing
points, tunnels and command centers, all of them in houses, schools, mosques and
even hospitals. Does anyone claim that the IDF was actually trying to kill
civilians, if they were you can be sure the toll would be a lot higher than it
was. The reason for the civilian casualties was because of the use of the
population as human shields to both protect Hamas firing points and to attract
IDF fire, since the civiliian casualty figure is the only positive outcome for
Hamas from this conflict. Talk about cynical (see http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7B54d385e6-f1b9-4e9f-8e94-890c3e6dd277%7D/ndtv-journalist-hamas-rockets-2.jpg ).

It is true that the IDF fired back at Hamas positions used to fire from
near schools containing refugees. This is certainly allowed under the rules of
war (Geneva conventions) when a protected area (such as a school) loses its
protection if firing comes from it. If you look at actual videos from the
IDF regarding the UNRWA school in Rafah where the little girl and 9 others
supposedly died, the firings were directly adjacent to the school and
furthermore the IDF response did not actually hit the school but hit the
position outside the school where the fire was coming from. The deaths would
have been much greater if the school itself containing ca. 3,000 refugees had
been hit, and in fact anyone can tell that the school was intact from the
videos shown on the news after the event. In that specific incident 10
died out of 3,000, not so many. Added this morning: In fact it has now been
shown that the school incident was staged by Hamas (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSkFQqutEpk )
and all you liberal media jerks were taken in, including the pro--Hamas Islamist
Sayeeda Warsi, who had infiltrated the Cameron Conservative Government.

Let us calculate how many Israelis might have been killed
by the missiles from Gaza had there been no Iron Dome system. Since there have
been ca. 3,500 missiles fired into Israel in the past three weeks, and the Iron
Dome has intercepted ca. 20% of them that were directed against populated areas,
that is 700 missiles that could have caused casualties, and let's assume that
only 2 people would have been killed on average by each missile, that is
already ca. 1,400 casualties. If by chance a missile had hit an Israeli school
or kindergarten, then the death count would have been much greater. Those that
regret that the civilian casualty figures in Gaza are disproportionate must
reflect on the fact that while Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas
tries to inflict them, and the world might not show as much sympathy for dead
Jews. If the UK is under missile attack from the Islamic State in the future we
will not sell them our Iron Dome system, since they want to boycott arms sales
to us.

So the crucial question arises, what was it that persuaded Hamas to
accept the same unconditional Egyptian ceasefire that it rejected 3 weeks
before? No one seems to be asking this question. The answer is of
course the damage that Israel did to Hamas facilities (not the civilian
casualties), namely the rocket stores and the tunnels destroyed and the
terrorist leaders that were killed durng the intervening period. Note that
after Hamas rejected the first unconditional ceasefire, US Secty of State John
Kerry met with the FMs of Turkey and Qatar, both of whom support Hamas, and gave
a statement before the press saying that we needed to be sensitive to the needs
of the Palestinian people and Israel should remove its blockade of Gaza.
Needless to say, this made PM Netanyahu furious and he ignored Kerry's ceasefire
proposal, and its good that he did, since Hamas eventually dropped this
condition for a ceasefire and accepted the unconditional ceasefire.

Now the bargaining is beginning. Israel cannot drop its blockade of Gaza
if there is any possibility that Hamas will import more missiles (newer long
range ones from Iran). Israel's major requirement is that Gaza be demilitarized
and that reconstruction cannot go on without close supervision (by a UN or other
body), otherwise Hamas will use the construction material to reconstruct their
tunnels. Whether or not Hamas feels it has taken enough destruction will
determine whether or not it will accept these conditions. Israel allows
and will allow more food, medicines and humanitarian aid to be trucked into
Gaza, as long as it can inspect all shipments. Both Egypt and the PA (whatever
they say in public) will be willing to persuade Hamas to give up its impossible
fantasy of destroying Israel. In this way the role of the PA will be enhanced
relative to Hamas, which may have implications for the future.